Can this 16-year-old 7'2" basketball player be for real?

I saw this tweet from Bleacher Report yesterday, and if you're not already familiar with Chol Marial, it's definitely worth watching the 45-second video:

He’s 16 years old, 7’2” and already longer than anyone in the NBA—and he’s still growing. Oh, and he's 💦 from deep pic.twitter.com/bBEGej73u1

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) October 5, 2016

My first thought is, I can't even imagine what it must be like for the kids who have to take on Cheshire Academy--I'm pretty sure the starting center on my high school team was 6'3".  Here's another clip I found of Marial as a freshman last season:



I wouldn't be surprised if he's actually 19, but still...



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An early look at 2016-17 college basketball national championship odds

The college basketball season doesn't begin until mid-November, but that doesn't mean it's too early to bet on who might take home the national title next March.  The following futures numbers are all from 2016/17 NCAA basketball betting in William Hill.  Here are the favorites, plus teams I like, don't like, or just find generally noteworthy based on their odds:

Duke, 7/2: The Blue Devils lost the No. 1 pick in the 2016 NBA draft, Brandon Ingram, but they're getting the potential No. 1 selection in the 2017 draft, Harry Giles.  Betting on the favorite is rarely a good idea in college hoops, particularly when the odds aren't that rewarding at 7/2.

Kentucky, 9/1: The Wildcats have the No. 1 recruiting class in the country according to ESPN Insider, just ahead of Duke.  Could an all-freshman starting lineup take them to a title?  My guess is no.

Kansas, 12/1: The Jayhawks round out the trio schools you always expect to see as preseason favorites.  Kansas brings back a large portion of the squad that went to the Elite Eight last March.

Oregon, 14/1:  Oregon?  The Ducks have the fourth-best championship odds in the country?  They won the Pac 12 last season and earned a No. 1 seed in the big dance, and this year they'll return four of five starters.

North Carolina, 16/1: It wouldn't be a college basketball season if the Tar Heels weren't among the top betting choices.

Michigan Sate, 18/1: The Spartans make it five of six teams you could put at the top of this list without even looking at the rosters.  Michigan State also pulled in the third-best freshman class after Duke and Kentucky.

Villanova, 18/1: Repeat champs seems to come along once a decade, dating back to UCLA's domination in the 1970s--North Carolina 1982-83, Duke 1991-92 and Florida 2006-07.  Could it be 'Nova's turn now?

UConn, 50/1: I love Connecticut at 50/1.  Nobody expected the 2014 Shabazz Napier or the 2011 Kemba Walker Huskies to bring home the title.

Gonzaga, 66/1: Kelly Olynyk's alma mater, first put on the map by John Stockton, fell to Syracuse in the Sweet Sixteen last year.  The Bulldogs lost big man Domantas (son of Arvydas) Sabonis to the NBA.

Butler, 125/1: Brad Stevens coached Butler to back-to-back title games in 2010-11, one of the most amazing stories in sports history.  These Bulldogs played Virginia tough in the second round of the 2016 tourney.

Michigan, 125/1: The Wolverines return seniors Zak Irvin and Derrick Walton to a team that nearly upset Notre Dame, who made the Elite Eight.  With odds on par with mid-major schools like Butler, Michigan is not a bad bet at 125/1.

Monmouth, 1000/1: The Hawks, located in West Long Branch New Jersey, won last year's regular-season title in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.  Monmouth's undergraduate enrollment is roughly 4,400, a fun long shot at 1000/1.  On the other hand...

Rutgers, 1000/1: The state university of New Jersey, enrollment 33,000, plays in the Big 10 conference and has the same title odds as Monmouth.  Yikes.  That's only slightly less pathetic than...

Boston College, 2000/1: The Eagles just made major college sports history by going winless in ACC conference play in both basketball and football in the same year.  There are no teams on the board with longer odds than BC.


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Buddy Hield shoots like Steph Curry in practice--until you watch Steph Curry shoot in practice

I'm a fan of Buddy Hield, and I'd be quite pleased if the Celtics traded down a few spots from No. 3 and drafted him.  When I saw this video of him draining five deep three-pointers in a row in a very Stephen Curry-esque fashion during a recent workout, I got pretty excited:

Buddy Hield showing off some Steph Curry-esque range in Anaheim this afternoon pic.twitter.com/30pbInLqpA

— Chad Ford (@chadfordinsider) May 24, 2016

That is, until I remembered this other clip I saw last month of Curry warming up before a game.  Also 5-for-5, but from the logo at half court:

video: curry goes 5-for-5 from the logo in warm-ups pic.twitter.com/TIDU6UJ8DH

— Erik Malinowski (@erikmal) May 16, 2016

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Remember when Kevin Garnett and Stephon Marbury wanted an all-nude ESPN The Magazine?

The greatest sign I ever saw a fan bring to a sporting event (Part 2)


When ESPN The Magazine debuted in the spring of 1998, Kevin Garnett and Stephon Marbury teamed up for one of the funniest commercials the network has ever put together (and that's really saying something)--a playful jab at Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue:



I was a junior at the University of Richmond at the time, and this ad was the coolest thing on campus.  Also that March, our Spiders won the Colonial Athletic Conference tournament to qualify for the big dance (where 14th-seeded and perennial giant-killer Richmond upset No. 3 South Carolina in the first round).

And that's the lead-in for the single greatest sign I've ever seen a fan bring to a sporting event (sadly, I don't have a photo).  One of our games that semester was broadcast on ESPN2, so in order to get on TV, a student in the crowd displayed the following:

Every
Spider
Plays
Nude
2 be tasteful

Brilliant.  From yesterday, here's the runner up.


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The greatest sign I ever saw a fan bring to a sporting event (Part 1)

Sadly, I don't have a picture of either of the two greatest signs I ever saw a fan bring to a sporting event--they were both at college basketball games in the late 1990s.  Here's the lead-in to Part 1 (the runner-up), with Part 2 coming tomorrow:

The Celtics worked out Mamadou N'Diaye today, a 7'6" Senegalese center from UC Irvine (the Anteaters, by the way, a spectacular college nickname).

7-foot-6 Mamadou Ndiaye checks out Shaq's size 22 shoes inside the Celtics' Hall of Fame room after his workout. pic.twitter.com/V5Bs5ALyeW

— Chris Forsberg (@ESPNForsberg) June 9, 2016

If the name rings a bell (which it probably doesn't), it's because he's the second NBA prospect from Senegal named Mamadou N'Diaye.

The first (not to be confused with Makhtar N'Diaye, who went to Michigan, transferred to North Carolina and was undrafted in 1998) was selected by the Nuggets 26th overall in 2000 and played briefly for the Raptors and Clippers.  Before that, he was a star at Auburn from 1996-2000.  It was at some point during that time that I watched the Auburn Tigers on TV and noticed a sign in the crowd that read the following:

"Your mama can't do what our Mamadou!"

That's the second-best sign I've ever seen at a game.  Check back tomorrow for No. 1.


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Five years ago Brad Stevens led one of the most unbelievable runs in sports history

It's funny to look back on those back-to-back national title games for Butler University knowing what we do now about Brad Stevens.  Considering everything he's gotten out of a not particularly talented Boston Celtics ballclub the last two years (and in their history-breaking win last night, which I predicted a month ago), his unprecedented NCAA tournament success no longer seems quite so unfathomable.

From March 29, 2011: I think what Butler is doing might be the most amazing thing in the history of sports

And from April 3, 2011: Freaking Butler again!?! Not possible

While I'm on the subject, here's what I wrote about Stevens the day the Celtics hired him.  Also, from last week, Stevens sounds like he misses being a college coach sometimes.


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My very simple 'Buddy Hield as an NBA player' analysis

I picked Oklahoma to win the NCAA tournament in all of my brackets because they have the best player in the country, Buddy Hield.  I've had a "Dwyane Wade at Marquette in 2003" feeling about Hield for a while now (Wade averaged 21.8 points per game while carring his No. 3 seed Golden Eagles to the Final Four), and that's why I expect him to be an excellent NBA player.

Don't guys who dominate the NCAA tournament tend to have success on the next level?  I was going to do a bit of research into this, but ESPN's His & Hers (which fittingly used to be called Numbers Never Lie) did it for me:

Another frame of reference: Take a look back at the 2011 draft when I couldn't believe Kemba Walker dropped to ninth.


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I'm not impressed that one half of the Elite Eight is all ACC teams

Half of the remaining NCAA tournament bracket is made up of schools from the same conference:

@AdamHimmelsbach also wild that those four teams are all in the ACC.

— Mark Vandeusen (@LucidSportsFan) March 26, 2016

This is why I'm not impressed:

1. The ACC has 15 teams.
2. It's called the Atlantic Coast Conference.

For the record, here's where Notre Dame, Syracuse, Virginia and North Carolina are located:

I hear the view of the Atlantic Ocean's coastline is spectacular in South Bend, Indiana.  Since the ACC represents roughly half the country, it's no surprise that it also occupies half of the Elite Eight.

NCAA conferences are such a joke--examples A, B, and C.


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I don't think athletes should ever be expected to talk to the press after heartbreaking losses

If you happened to catch the Northern Iowa postgame press conference yesterday after the Panthers suffered literally the worst collapse in NCAA basketball history, yikes--it was brutal.  The one kid in the middle (pictured above) literally couldn't stop crying, and I don't blame him in the slightest.  I think it's crazy that athletes are asked to speak to the media directly after gut-wrenching losses.  And I don't just mean students, this applies to the pros as well.

I'm not a Cam Newton fan, but I was very sympathetic towards him during his somewhat controversial interaction with the press after the Super Bowl.  Imagine if you'd just undergone one of, if not the most disappointing moment(s) of your life, likely the worst thing that's ever happened in your professional career, and were forced to talk to reporters about it immediately afterwards?  I can't imagine any human being would want to do that, and I doubt very many people are capable of handling it well.

"Hey Jim the investment banker, you blew a multi-million dollar deal this afternoon and are getting transferred to Tulsa tomorrow, how does it feel?"


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"First Four" wins shouldn't count as NCAA Tournament wins

If you read my blog yesterday about how nobody wants to see No. 67 vs. No. 68, here's something else that's stupid about the NCAA tournament field including 68 teams: Schools that don't actually win real tournament games get to claim that they did.

Yesterday, Holy Cross beat Southern in a play-in game.  The headlines stated "Holy Cross get's first tournament win in 63 years!"  From the ESPN.com game recap: "The Crusaders had lost nine consecutive NCAA tournament games since defeating Navy and Wake Forest in 1953..."

There's a reason Holy Cross had lost nine straight: It's a small school from a no-name conference that was a massive underdog against top seeds every time it made the dance.  A few years down the road people will see the Crusaders got a tourney win in 2016 and think "Oh wow, who did they upset?"  The answer is nobody, because they beat another 16 seed in a stupid "First Four" matchup.

As a former Richmond Spider, I take personal offense to this.  Richmond, the greatest giant-killer in tournament history, has won eight games as a 12, 13, 14 or 15 seed against actual competition.  Holy Cross' "victory" as a No. 16 is extraordinarily cheap by comparison.

Last night SportsCenter ran the above graphic after 11th-seeded Michigan knocked off fellow No. 11 Tulsa in another not-really-the-tournament-yet contest.  The Wolverines shouldn't get to have that ninth W on their resume just because they were bad enough this year to squeak in as one of the final at-large teams and play an extra game against an equally not-good squad.


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Why doesn't the NCAA tournament realize nobody wants to see No. 67 vs. No. 68?

Get pumped for HC/SO.

There are millions of reasons why it's stupid that the NCAA tournament includes 68 teams, made obvious by the fact that every bracket available only acknowledges the existence of 64 (I have the "Michigan/Tulsa" entrant getting all the way to the Elite Eight, by the way).

Holy Cross takes on Southern tonight in a game nobody other than fans of those two schools cares about.  Holy Cross went 10-19 this regular season, including 0-8 on the road in Patriot League play (good for ninth place in a 10-team league).  Yet somehow, the Crusaders won four straight road games in the conference tourney to capture the title and earn an automatic bid to the big dance.

Why would anybody be interested in watching that Holy Cross club take on a squad that finished in fourth place (11-7) in the Southwestern Athletic Conference (but also won its league tournament)?

The fun of having teams like these in the NCAA tournament is to see what happens when they go up against a giant like North Carolina or Kansas.  Holy Cross vs. Southern and Florida Gulf Coast vs. Fairleigh Dickinson (the game nobody cared about last night, won by the Eagles--which one is the Eagles?) are boring and a waste of time.  Not to mention the fact that the losing squads never really get the actual tourney experience.


RELATED:
- NCAA announces it will stop trying to lie to us about the "first round" of the tournament
- The odds of picking a perfect NCAA tournament bracket are not as impossible as you may have heard
- Why does the NCAA insist on playing every tournament game on the same boring floor?
- The internet has kind of ruined tourney pools
- NCAA bracket advice: Nobody really knows anything


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It should be a wacky 2016 NCAA tournament (it's a good year to bet on some long shots)

Cavaliers a No. 1 seed with 30/1 odds?

We're two weeks away from the 2016 NCAA men's basketball tournament, and it's looking like one of the most wide-open fields we've seen in a long time.

The expected No. 1 pick in the NBA draft, Ben Simmons, plays for an 18-12 LSU team that likely won't even be there.  That's weird.  The last time a top-overall selection missed the tournament was 18 years ago, when Michael Olowokandi was selected first by the Clippers out of Pacific University.

Buddy Hield has taken the nation by storm, but after lifting Oklahoma to No. 1 in the AP poll in January, his Sooners have fallen back to No. 6 in the rankings.

According to Mytopsportsbooks.com, Kansas and Michigan St. are the co-favorites to win it all at 6/1.  For comparison, last year Kentucky was 6/5 to take home the title (although Duke, who was 9/1, ended up winning).

ESPN's Joe Lunardi currently projects Kansas, Villanova (20/1), North Carolina (25/1) and Virginia (30/1) as the four top seeds.  A No. 1 seed with 30/1 odds?  Wow.  Lunardi also has Xavier (40/1) as a No. 2 seed.  If you're somebody who likes to put down money on winners instead of entering a standard fill-out-a-bracket pool, this is shaping up like a great tourney to pick a few long shots.



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NCAA announces it will stop trying to lie to us about the "first round" of the tournament

Actually the first round.

Ever since the men's college basketball tournament expanded to 68 teams in 2011, the NCAA has attempted (unsuccessfully) to perpetrate a fraud on the hoops-watching American public.

For the past five years, the NCAA repeatedly told us that the first round (when 64 teams play on Thursday and Friday) was actually the second round, and that the four play-in games on Tuesday and Wednesday were actually the first round.  Nobody believed it and nobody actually called them that, but the NCAA insisted that was the case and did its best to make things as confusing as possible.

Today the NCAA admitted that was stupid by officially renaming the first round "the first round" and calling the play-in games the "First Four."

The next thing that needs to be fixed about the tournament?  Stop playing every game on the same boring floor.


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Any NBA team would beat any college team by whatever score it wanted to

On Thursday night, the Kentucky Wildcats beat West Virginia 76-38.  Not only did it double the Mountaineers point total, but Kentucky could have gone scoreless in the second half and still won the game (it was 44-18 at halftime).  And we're not talking about a 1 vs. 16 matchup involving a MEAC or Summit League team, West Virginia was a No. 5 seed out of the Big 12.

With Kentucky (37-0) being so good this year, the topic keeps coming up as to how they would fair against the worst team in the NBA (currently the Knicks).  This headline I saw yesterday made me mad:

For @YahooSports: Vegas oddsmakers: Knicks would be heavily favored against Kentucky. http://t.co/SwQ1Og2cux pic.twitter.com/0hHbMhcn5s
— Ben Rohrbach (@brohrbach) March 27, 2015

Ya think?  That is not news.  I'm so sick of hearing about this.  The article sites a Vegas sports book who claims the Knicks would be 13.5-point favorites vs. Kentucky.  That's an absurdly low number.  Re-read the title above.  The gap in talent level between the Knicks and Kentucky is significantly greater than the one between Kentucky and West Virginia.

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A sad day for Spiders

I feel as though I'd be doing my Richmond Spiders an injustice to let a who college basketball season go by without writing about them once.  UR finished 21-14 this year after falling to Miami, 63-61, in the NIT quarterfinals yesterday.

The Spiders earned a No. 1 seed in the NIT (I love how they announce the seeds now), but looked like a small conference team against a big conference team in crunch time of last night's defeat.

Richmond held the Hurricanes scoreless for an 8:05 stretch in the first half, building an early 13-2 lead at the Robins Center.  The Spiders' outstanding defense continued into the second half, and with 16:54 left in the game they actually doubled-up Miami, 36-18, after a Kendall Anthony (pictured) three-pointer.

Unfortunately Richmond couldn't buy a bucket down the stretch, failing to make a field goal for the final nine minutes of the game--until a meaningless layup with 17 seconds remaining and Miami already up 61-55.

Solid season, very painful ending.

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ESPN.com's March Madness bracket format is terrible, right? What were they thinking?

When I take a quick look at a section of my ESPN.com NCAA tournament bracket (above), I somehow have absolutely no idea which teams I picked, how many I've gotten right, or even who I have in the Final Four.

How is that even possible?

If you look at it long enough eventually you figure it out, but I'm way too annoyed with it to explain the details.  It's pretty incredible that ESPN managed to take a very simple thing and make it super confusing.

Below is my Yahoo.com bracket, which illustrates the obvious basic format used for every bracket ever in the history of time.

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The odds of picking a perfect NCAA tournament bracket are not as impossible as you may have heard

I've seen in several places that the odds of filling out a perfect NCAA tournament bracket are roughly 1 in 9.2 quintillion (9,223,372,036,854,775,808).  That's just not true.

The math is sound.  There are 63 games, each with two possible outcomes.  That really big number I already typed out once is equal to 2^63.  If you want to know the chances of correctly predicting 63 consecutive coin flips, that's your answer.

The thing is, NCAA tourney games aren't coin flips.  The worst-case scenario you have for picking any given game is 50/50, but a lot are much easier.  When 34-0 Kentucky plays 17-17 Hampton tomorrow night, I'd guess there's about a 99 percent likelihood (maybe more) that the Wildcats emerge victorious.

If choosing every winner was that simple, a perfect bracket would be too--you'd have a 54 percent chance (.99^63).  Obviously most games are harder to get right than that.  For the sake of simple math, I'll estimate there's a two-thirds probability of picking each one correctly on average.  Under that premise, the calculation becomes 1.5^63, which makes the odds of predicting a perfect bracket "only" 1 in 124 billion or so.

9,223,372,036,854,775,808
vs.
124,093,581,920

Pretty big difference, huh?

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I'm betting on "Wildcats" in this NCAA tournament

As people are making their 2015 NCAA tournament picks, three of the most common Final Four choices are No. 1 seed Kentucky in the Midwest (34-0, ranked 1st), No. 1 seed Villanova in the East (32-2, ranked 2nd) and No. 2 seed Arizona in the West (31-3, ranked 4th in one poll, 5th in the other).

What do all three of these clubs have in common?

They're all Wildcats.

According to VegasInsider.com, the Kentucky Wildcats are 1:1 (50%) to win the whole thing.  The Villanova Wildcats are 8:1 (11.1%), while the Arizona Wildcats are 12:1 (7.7%).  Add those up and the chances of a Wildcats champion are roughly 69%.

If you can find a casino taking bets on "Wildcats" at 1:2 (66.7%), you'll be getting some good odds...

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BC Eagles' tournament run is underway! (or not)

The BC Eagles finished the regular season 13-18, with a 4-14 record in ACC conference play.  But, the beauty of college basketball is that your season isn't over until you lose your final game.

Led by 25 points, eight rebounds and five assists from Olivier Hanlan (pictured hitting the game-winner), No. 12 seed Boston College squeaked by 13th seeded Georgia Tech 66-65 this afternoon in an ACC Tournament play-in game.

I didn't think I cared until I turned it on.  College hoops in March has a way of doing that to you...

Killer turnover as BC knocks off Georgia Tech #ACCTournament https://t.co/zNAR2SRW5t
— Mark Vandeusen (@LucidSportsFan) March 10, 2015

Next up for the Eagles at 2 p.m. tomorrow, fifth seed North Carolina, ranked No. 19 in the country.

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Guess what, Gonzaga is (still) not a top-3 college basketball team

Somebody who plays for Gonzaga helped them beat
St. Mary's 70-60 on February 21.

I haven't watched the Gonzaga Bulldogs play all season.  I can't name a single guy on their team.  And to be honest, I have paid next to no attention to college hoops this season.

But even having said all that, I am still 99 percent certain that Gonzaga is not worthy of their No. 2 USA Today Coaches/No. 3 AP ranking.  The Bulldogs climbed that high in the polls by virtue of their 28-1 record (16-0 West Coast Conference).  However, they've played one top-20 team all year--can you guess which game their lone loss is?  It came against then No. 3 Arizona on December 6.

I wrote this exact post two years ago, a few days before Gonzaga took over the No. 1 ranking for the first time in school history.  Then I wrote it again last season when 34-0 Wichita State (out of the Missouri Valley Conference) entered the postseason ranked No. 2.  Both clubs were awarded No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament, and each of them got upset in the second round.

Murdering your crappy conference schedule does not make you a top team.  Playing well against quality competition does.

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